invoice | The Contracting Education Academy

January 4, 2017 By AMK

DoD contractor agrees to $4.5 million settlement for alleged False Claim Act violations

Advanced C4 Solutions, Inc. has agreed to pay $4.535 million to the United States to settle allegations that it submitted inflated invoices to the government for work performed at Joint Base Andrews.

Advanced C4 Solutions, Inc. is a Florida-based company that was operating as an 8(a) small business certified by the Small Business Administration (SBA). On June 10, 2010, Advanced C4 was awarded a contract to supply project management and labor services for an Air Force technology project. The contract was awarded by the U.S. Navy’s Space and Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), which was administering the contract in support of the United States Air Force.

Among other things, the contract required the Advanced C4 to design, construct, and implement certain local area network and wide area network systems that would be utilized by Air Force personnel and other components of the U.S. Armed Forces on Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The contract required the company to accurately provide invoices to the United States for work performed under the contract, including work by subcontractors. Labor costs were required to be billed according to the job classifications set forth in the contract and the number of labor hours worked by personnel at each job classification. The contract also provided that the Advanced C4 could only utilize pre-approved subcontractors. Pursuant to this provision, the company entered into subcontractor agreements with several entities, one of which was Superior Communication Solutions, Inc. (SCSI).

spawar Advanced C4 Solutions and its subcontractors began work under the SPAWAR contract in June 2010. Andrew Bennett was the Advanced C4’s project manager who was tasked with overseeing the work performed by the company and its subcontractors under the contract. In this capacity, Bennett was responsible for verifying the accuracy of all invoices submitted by subcontractors to the company and, in turn, all the invoices submitted by the company to SPAWAR.

The settlement agreed to on Dec. 28, 2016 resolves allegations that Bennett, while an employee of Advanced C4, knew that SCSI created false invoices that charged for labor hours that were not actually worked, and charged the United States at job classification rates for personnel that did not have the requisite credentials to be billed at those rates, and yet submitted those SCSI invoices to the government for payment anyway. SPAWAR subsequently paid these invoices not knowing they were false.

In related cases, Bennett, of Tampa Florida, James T. Shank, of Perry, Georgia, and a third individual were indicted on federal criminal charges related to their actions in this matter. Bennett and Shank pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their conduct related to the SPAWAR contract. The third defendant is scheduled for trial beginning on January 30, 2017.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/defense-contractor-agrees-4535-million-settlement-alleged-false-claim-act-violations

November 11, 2016 By AMK

DHS gives its ‘backlog’ of contract closeouts a taste of the PIL

The Homeland Security Department’s Procurement Innovation Lab (PIL) is tackling one of those hidden problems of federal acquisition — the need to close out low-risk, low-dollar contracts.

Too often these contracts are forgotten or under prioritized, and a backlog builds up. At DHS, for example, its backlog grew to more than 350,000, and 92 percent of the contracts had been completed more than a year ago.

Soraya Correa, the chief procurement officer at DHS, said the PIL took an innovation risk and re-engineered the business processes for contract closeout.

Correa said the PIL developed new quick closeout procedures in a simplified manner. DHS released a Federal Register notice in early October alerting contractors of its plans and the requirement to submit all outstanding invoices by Dec. 2.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/acquisition-policy/2016/11/dhs-gives-backlog-contract-closeouts-taste-pil/

December 27, 2013 By AMK

Navy Secretary Mabus expects bribery scandal to widen

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Friday that he bluntly told criminal investigators to pursue a widening bribery scandal “wherever it leads” and that he expects more people to get swept up in a case that has already tarred several senior officers and exposed an international, multimillion-dollar fraud scheme.

“I certainly don’t think we’ve seen the end of it,” Mabus told reporters at the Pentagon in his first public comments on the scandal since it came to light in September. “I would rather get bad headlines than let bad people get away.”

Mabus, the Navy’s top civilian official since 2009, spoke a day after he held an unusual video conference with the Navy’s fleet commanders and other admirals around the world to emphasize the need to uphold ethical standards and prevent contracting fraud. With the scandal showing no sign of abating, he also has ordered several reviews and an audit into how the Navy pays for port services.

The Navy has been tarnished by a succession of embarrassing revelations over the past three months about its relationship with a major foreign defense contractor, Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia, that has provided port services to U.S. ships and submarines in the Pacific for a quarter-century.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/navy-secretary-mabus-expects-bribery-scandal-to-widen/2013/12/20/c85f8ece-6990-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html

January 3, 2011 By AMK

DoD auditors fault Northrop Grumman for BAMS invoices

The Navy gave Northrop Grumman as much as $300,000 in profit for filling out $3 million worth of travel expense forms–and some of those expenses should have never been approved, says the Defense Department inspector general.

In a Dec. 23 report on the Navy’s $1.8 billion Broad Area Maritime Surveillance system development and demonstration cost plus contract, auditors find that Northrop Grumman submitted at least $206,000 worth of travel vouchers for trips to golf outings and air shows in Washington, D.C., Paris and Singapore. While the Defense Department recovered that money from Northrop Grumman, a company official told auditors that they have not reviewed all travel vouchers or other charges related to the BAMS contract.

“There is a potential for additional unallowable expenses charged and paid to the BAMS contractor,” the report warns. BAMS is a unmanned aircraft system based on the Global Hawk meant to perform persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance within a range of 2,000 nautical miles. Naval Air Systems Command awarded in April 2008 Northrop a BAMS development contract with a fixed base award fee of 3 percent with an additional 7 percent award fee tied to performance. A “fee” is often how the government dubs “profit.”

Although legitimate travel is an allowable cost under cost plus contracts, auditors say they question giving contractors any fee at all tied to travel expenses, since “it is difficult to evaluate the contractor’s performance on travel.” But in the case of Northrop’s BAMS travel vouchers, the performance was arguably bad enough to preclude it from receiving any award fee, the report says. NAVAIR officials told auditors they’ll consider making travel just a cost reimbursement line item in future procurements.

The report also faults Navy personnel for not reviewing Northrop Grumman bills or going through the government acceptance process before issuing payment. Invoices from the company didn’t itemize amounts billed by labor hour, materials and other costs. For example, one invoice for $22.6 million simply stated that it was a bill for a “cost plus item” and that the unit of measure was “each” with a quantity of “one.”

For more: download the report, D-2011-028 (.pdf)

– Jan. 3, 2010, posted at www.fiercegovernmentit.com

Advanced C4 Solutions, Inc. has agreed to pay $4.535 million to the United States to settle allegations that it submitted inflated invoices to the government for work performed at Joint Base Andrews.

The Homeland Security Department’s Procurement Innovation Lab (PIL) is tackling one of those hidden problems of federal acquisition — the need to close out low-risk, low-dollar contracts.

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